Accenture is a global digital technology company that works with other healthcare businesses to create innovative solutions that transform the business—and the healthcare industry—for good.
They solve the toughest challenges their clients come to them with by providing them with high-quality, unmatched services that cover strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations.
Over time, Accenture has brought a lot to the digital healthcare industry, to the point where it can be hard to keep up with it.
For that reason, we are going to share with you just a few of the things Accenture healthcare have done to innovate the healthcare industry for good below.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bots
Accenture Healthcare have recently announced the launch of two interactive virtual-assistance bots.
They are Ethan and Ella, and use artificial intelligence to continuously learn and make intelligent recommendations for interactions between life sciences companies, patients, healthcare providers, and caregivers.
They were created to complement and enhance Accenture’s Intelligent Patient Platform.
The aim of these bots is to help improve a patient’s health and overall experience by providing them with a personalized, interactive way to manage their health and engage with any member of their care team.
In addition to this, these bots also promote continuous engagement between healthcare professionals and patients, which adds to the customer satisfaction levels of the individuals using these bots.
It isn’t just encouraging communication between patients and their various healthcare professionals that makes these chatbots look so attractive.
They also perform some healthcare functions which allows individuals to monitor and manage their own health from the comfort of their own home.
The functions they provide include medication reminders, vital tracking, and the ability for patients to schedule appointments when needed.
This device demonstrates a drastic change in the way healthcare currently operates, and could be a healthcare innovation that changes the way we think of the industry in future.
Extended Reality
Extended reality consists of virtual and augmented reality technologies that blur the lines between physical and simulated worlds.
This technology makes immersive, simulated experiences commonplace, solving distance and minimising its relevance to any given situation.
This innovation is extremely important in healthcare because it means that those who struggle to access essential healthcare services due to their circumstances are now able to do so.
This could mean that an elderly woman living in a rural area can seek treatment for a chronic health condition, or that a young person with a health condition too busy with work to make a physical appointment can do the same.
It also opens the doors for the types of healthcare professionals these individuals will have access too.
Instead of having to compromise and see a non-specialist because there is no local specialist available, extended reality allows for specialists to be brought directly to the patient through a fully immersive, digital experience.
This directly addresses common pain points in health and the healthcare industry overall, and it could be key in solving issues that the industry as a whole is currently struggling to understand.
It isn’t just patients who benefit from this technology, however.#
Extended reality can also be used to overlay and enhance digital information during a physical task, such as surgery or a consultancy appointment.
In fact, 82 percent of healthcare executives agree that this technology removes the hurdles created by limited information and experience, allowing them to handle more advanced treatments in a reduced timescale.
It can also be used to help healthcare professionals train, by allowing training scenarios to be set up anywhere, run, replicated and then adjusted to give professionals an all-round, varied experience.
Dual Mandate System
The healthcare industry has always been incredibly data-driven, a feature that has come in handy now that healthcare organizations are wising up to the digital age.
In recent years, decisions made due to data have increased, largely due to the industry’s ability to utilise artificial intelligence for administrative and clinical functions.
Something that Accenture Healthcare continues to warn health organizations about is the risks of relying too heavily on these advanced features of technology—especially when you don’t know how to properly utilise them.
A large reason for this is because artificial intelligence is only ever as effective as those who train it.
This means that healthcare organizations still need to implement data veracity to accurately understand where their data has come from and how truthful it is.
If they don’t do this, then it could risk their entire organization.
Even though this is something Accenture Health are passionate about, 77 percent of health executives surveyed said that they aren’t prepared to confront the impending waves of corrupted insights as falsified data starts to infiltrate their data-driven information systems.
Other research shows that 83 percent of physicians have already experience cyber-attacks.
This is extremely worrying, and shows that although concerns about patient confidentiality have been raised, healthcare organizations often feel unable to do anything about it.
This is where Accenture Healthcare come in, with the dual mandate system in place helping these organizations to verify their data and make sure it has not been falsified.
This involves the integration of digitalised services and humans to check the data these artificial intelligence devices receive so that data can be tracked from the beginning to verify its history.
It also involves looking at the context, and the circumstances arounds its use, and ensuring that healthcare companies have the necessary measures in place to secure and maintain data at all times.
One technology measure that may help with this is to use blockchains to prevent artificial intelligence data systems from being hacked and the information being manipulated by those who do so.
This is an important healthcare innovation as it ensures that the health industry remains careful with patient data and stops relying on the digital age to handle situations with little knowledge of what could go wrong.
